It used to be that a USB thumb drive was used mainly for transporting files to and from computers. Now, however, more people are using thumb drives to house portable applications. When you sit down at a computer that doesn't have Firefox, for example, and you're simply unwilling to double-click that Internet Explorer icon, just pop in your thumb drive, double-click your portable Firefox application, and surf away--no installation necessary.

Lists of portable applications are as old as the applications themselves, but lists of portable Mac applications are more rare. Over at Web Worker Daily, they have counted up and listed eleven portable applications for your Mac. Favorites on the list include Adium, that ubiquitous multi-protocol chat client, Bean, a lean and mean text editor, and iStumbler, a small app designed to find all wireless signals in your area, including Bluetooth, Airport, and Bonjour.

No longer will we envy those Geek Squaders with their multi-toned VW bugs and their keychain of portable thumb drives. Now we too can carry our USB drives with purpose. But unlike the Geek Squad, we will use our thumb drives for good, not for evil.

[Via Web Worker Daily]